Dan Burn's pre-Aston Villa programme notes: 'We'll be bang up for it'

We welcome Aston Villa to St. James’ Park this afternoon, and there seems to be a good rivalry between our two teams at the moment, especially between the fans. So we know the atmosphere is set to be another good one today.

We always have really good games against Aston Villa, particularly at home. I’m hoping for more of the same today. And it’s a good opportunity for us to lay down a marker – our league form has been good so hopefully we can continue that and keep the Premier League form going.

Villa are flying this season. Unai Emery’s teams are always strong, and the squad they’ve got and continue to build, it all shows why they’re up there and competing. It’ll be a tough game, but these are the games I never really worry about – I know we’ll be bang up for the fight and ready to go with a point to prove.

It was good to be back with the lads this week in training and hopefully I’ll build up contact training so I should be able to be ready to go for the upcoming games. I’m feeling a lot better now after the injury – it was rough the first couple of weeks, but I can do pretty much everything now.

I’ve had trauma injuries before and I can handle a fair bit of pain, but this one was probably the scariest, most painful I’ve had. I needed to be safe and sensible with the recovery.

The lads have been doing well in my absence with some really good results and some exciting games. It’s been nice to sit and watch and get excited about the games even if I was getting really itchy feet not being there.

But sometimes, being an older, more experienced player, if you’re not there, it allows some of the younger players to step up and have that leadership role for a bit. So I was never worried about Lewis Miley stepping into defence. He’s so calm and collected, even when he was 16 years old coming in, getting moved around positions in training, we knew how good a player he was and I’m really happy for him.

I’m also buzzing for Sven Botman as well, he’s had a tough time with injuries and it’s nice that the club have rewarded him with a new contract and he’s committed his long-term future to the club.

The lads have been doing really well recently, we obviously had a bit of disappointment after the Manchester City game – but there are so many games coming up that we have to move on quickly whatever the result.

Before that game, we hadn’t been beaten at home for 13 games – so we always fancy ourselves here at St. James’ Park and today is no different.

Dan Burn.